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Sales professionals working today know that customers rely on and prefer researching online when it comes to making purchasing decisions. For those sellers that are active where their prospects and customers are - on digital platforms - 10% report that they have closed at least 5 deals through the medium.

While there are many tactics that can help close that all important deal, sales enablement tools can help sellers in their daily job and remain front of mind of the people that matter - customers.

In this article, we will explore 9 tools that can help your sales team target key decision makers and capture vital information to turn a prospect into a loyal customer.

Why use tools at all?

Staying connected with your sales team and making sure they have a firm grasp on the marketplace is vital to success. However, it can be easier said than done. Analyzing customer interactions and nurturing leads can eat up a lot of time, but there are tools out there that can make these jobs a lot easier and more effective.

Sales enablement tools allow sales professionals to use technology and new processes to increase their productivity and engagement with prospective clients and buyers. Ultimately, these tools can result in increased revenue for the company by boosting a sales department’s closure rate.

While there are a lot of tools and apps on the market, what follows are 9 of the best divided into the following categories:

Email Tracking

Appointment Scheduling and Reminder Tools

Workflow Integration

Automation and Tracking

Content Creation

Email Tracking

SideKick

Sidekick is a plugin from HubSpot that allows users to see the exact moment that someone opens an email. This helps alleviate the confusion that usually comes with email marketing and answers the important question of “are these people even reading my emails?” Using this tool a seller will know if, and when emails are being read.

The features of this app include enhanced tracking and instant-read notifications. The benefits of this kind of visibility and tracking are better communication with clients and a decrease in non-productive efforts, as a seller will know which kinds of emails are getting positive results and capitalize on them.

MixMax

Similar to SideKick, Mix Max allows users to see what prospects are doing with your emails after you send them. The tool also allows you to create email templates for a variety of business functions. In addition, MixMax provides metrics for emails to show when and if the emails are being opened, how many times, how often they’re replied to, etc.

All of these features result in an extremely robust look at your seller's email marketing efforts, and can help them easily see which approaches and messaging are paying off and which can be put aside.

The average employee spends 13 hours a week on emails alone, which means 28% of the workweek is taken up by email - Attentiv

Appointment Scheduling & Reminders

Calendly

Calendly is a simple appointment scheduling tool that benefits both the parties involved in a meeting - the scheduler and the attendee. Traditionally, scheduling a meeting, particularly via email is a time-consuming process whereby each party sends prospective time blocks back and forth until eventually a date and time is settled upon.

The tool allows sellers to upload your availability in one fail swoop and then embed the Calendly link into emails or directly onto a website. Recipients can then click on the link and choose any available time block for your meeting, all without having to engage in the typical back and forth.

The features of Calendly are plentiful and include integration with most popular calendar applications (Google, Outlook, Office 365, etc.), dynamic control of when and how often appointments can be scheduled, flexible scheduling options, time zone intelligence and the ability to be used by individuals, teams and departments alike.

This tool combines the features of both an email tracker and a scheduling app. FollowupCC allows users to customize contact lists with additional notes and insights, ensuring the crucial information about clients is always at hand. In addition, reminders can be set for any number of tasks and emails scheduled to go out to your selected contacts.

Like some of the other apps listed, FollowupCC allows a seller to see when contacts are opening emails and automatic email replies can be set up to be sent if a recipient doesn’t open an email. All of these features result in a simple and lean management system, saving your team time and money.

Workflow Integration

ToutApp

ToutApp is a workflow integration system that allows for customized email campaigns and detailed feedback and tracking at every stage of the process. It allows sellers to see who and when prospects and customers are engaging emails, website links and documents.

Automated sales campaigns can also be set-up with integrated templates and content to maximize the reach of sales efforts. The app comes with integrated calendaring features so you can book meetings with prospective and existing clients. The tools unique reporting capabilities allow sellers to analyze calls, emails, calendar events and CRM data to create custom reports and insights.

All of these features result in a sales team being able to manage and forecast sales efforts accurately, increasing productivity and profitability.

Automation & Tracking

Fileboard provides end-to-end sales engagement tools for all levels of a sales operation, from account executives and managers to sales reps. Sales reps can use Fileboard to generate detailed cadences, email tracking and account-based workflows.

Sellers can also track emails and easily schedule meeting with potential and existing clients. While sales managers can easily forecast performance based on real sales activity. The result of these tools is a more efficient and profitable sales platform.

Act-On

A cloud-based automated marketing solution, Act-On provides incredible insights into one of the vital steps of a successful marketing campaign - measuring results. Using the platform, sellers and marketers can easily manage and optimize all stages of the customer experience and see their return on investment by attributing spend to revenue.

Every prospect’s activity can be tracked from initial engagement to closed sales and both detailed and high-level reports can be generated for each sales campaign. The benefits of this level of insight are smarter, more efficient and more profitable campaigns.

Venntive

Venntive allows users to create marketing experiences that are unique to each customer. The platform provides tools for everything from inbound marketing to automated email tools. Features include the ability to score leads, build eCommerce websites, manage inbound marketing, forecast sales campaigns, manage projects and then analyze sales efforts for future campaign decisions.

Content Creation

60% of people are inspired to seek out a product after reading content about it - Curata

Bloomfire

Using AI technology Bloomfire helps organizations deliver the right content to the right users, at the right time. By combining TextRank and PageRank, the software creates a digital content fingerprint” based on keywords which it uses to establish which pieces are contextually similar.

For sales leaders, it can help onboard new reps faster by providing content that can help them learn quickly through videos or sales presentations. While sellers can benefit from insights on content they provide through the app to prospects and track engagement to gain actionable insight. It is also customizable and integrates with Salesforce.

For sales teams there’s no shortage of enablement tools on the market, and each one has different capabilities. The key to making them work for your team and company is to research each to see which one will work best for your sellers and systems.

The great part about these tools is that most of these applications offer free demos, so you can usually try out the apps prior to purchasing to see if they fit your needs. Either way, arming your sales team with these type of tools can make for productive and profitable sales campaigns and efficient and engaged sellers.